Art Market Monitor Announces Second Artelligence Lineup

The writer and Observer contributor Marion Maneker, who runs the popular Art Market Monitor blog, has announced the lineup for his second Artelligence conference, which brings together a variety of speakers to discuss the art market and using art as an asset.

This edition’s roster includes Nicholas Acquavella of Acquavella Galleries and Helly Nahmad of Helly Nahmad Gallery, as well as representatives from banks and auction houses. (More details can be found at the conference’s registration page here.) The first took place in April and had as its headliner our own Adam Lindemann, and his wife, Amalia Dayan, who is a dealer.

“The idea’s fairly simple,” Mr. Maneker told The Observer this morning. “As art becomes more valuable and more consistently used as an asset, there’s a whole group of people who deal with managing art as an asset. They range from family offices to art advisers, to people in the insurance industry and a number of different lawyers including trust and estates lawyers, who deal with their clients’ art as an asset. It’s a place for people to get together.”

There will be panels on art funds, the international trade and a Picasso market report that will use the prolific artist’s business as a way of examining the operation of the market at large.

“My experience with people in the art market–especially people who are dealing–is that they tend to be remarkably straightforward,” Mr. Maneker said. “You ask them a question about something and they’ll tell you. It’s one of the amazing things–everyone thinks it’s a very secretive world, and it is, but if you ask an art dealer, they’ll give you their honest opinion. That’s part of what they represent. You trust their knowledge of the objects, their value, where they are, who has them, what they’re willing to sell them for, and so they have more interest in telling you what they really think.

“And dealers tend to have a lot more skin in the game than other people,” he added. “For a lot of stuff, they’ve bought it, so even though they’re selling, they’ve taken the risk and they own it. They’ve made an investment.”

So, we asked cheekily, do Mr. Nahmad and Mr. Acquavella have good on-stage chemistry?